When people feel their insignificance as individual persons, they also suffer an undermining of their sense of human responsibility.
ROLLO MAYEvery human being must have a point at which he stands against the culture, where he says, “This is me and the world be damned!” Leaders have always been the ones to stand against the society – Socrates, Christ, Freud, all the way down the line.
More Rollo May Quotes
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Therapy isn’t curing somebody of something; it is a means of helping a person explore himself, his life, his consciousness. My purpose as a therapist is to find out what it means to be human.
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Depression is the inability to construct a future.
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Competitive individualism militates against the experience of community, and that lack of community is a centrally important factor in contemporaneous anxiety.
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Humor is the healthy way of feeling “distance” between one’s self and the problem, a way of standing off and looking at one’s problem with perspective.
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Every human being must have a point at which he stands against the culture, where he says, this is me and the damned world can go to hell.
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The relationship between commitment and doubt is by no means an antagonistic one. Commitment is healthiest when it is not without doubt but in spite of doubt.
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This personal freedom to think and feel and speak authentically and to be conscious of so doing is the quality that distinguishes us as human.
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Freedom is man’s capacity to take a hand in his own development. It is our capacity to mold ourselves.
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Love is generally confused with dependence; but in point of fact, you can love only in proportion to your capacity for independence.
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The hallmark of courage in our age of conformity is the capacity to stand on one’s own convictions – not obstinately or defiantly
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It is amazing how many hints and guides and intuitions for living come to the sensitive person who has ears to hear what his body is saying.
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It is an old and ironic habit of human beings to run faster when we have lost our way; and we grasp more fiercely at research, statistics, and technical aids in sex when we have lost the values and meaning of love.
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Anxiety is essential to the human condition. The confrontation with anxiety can relieve us from boredom, sharpen the sensitivity and assure the presence of tension that is necessary to preserve human existence.
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Recall how often in human history the saint and the rebel have be the same person. (p. 35)
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Courage is not the absence of despair; it is, rather, the capacity to move ahead in spite of despair.
ROLLO MAY